This is an eco-political blog written for the sole purpose of participating in the conversation. It is a place to talk about most politics with a concentration on sustainability news and issues, state and local politics and progressive issues.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

In the next few months, all eyes are going to be on the growing conflict that is currently simmering in the cold arctic circle. As the ice melts, the once remote and un-navigable area is opening to all sorts of activity. This will have serious repercussions for the local environment and the world. Everything from ships using the new trade routes to militarizing the area to the mining and the extraction of newly discovered minerals and oil will have potentially catastrophic effects.

The Arctic Council

To understand the issues, we need to familiarize ourselves with the political body set in charge of the Arctic. The territory that makes up the Arctic Circle is divided up among 6 countries; the U.S., Canada, Iceland, Norway, Greenland (Denmark), and Russia. Each country is allowed to claim 200 miles of the ocean off of their perspective coasts. These six countries make up an odd diplomatic assembly known as the Arctic Council whose responsibility it is "to provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, with the involvement of the Arctic Indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic."

“The United States is anxious to militarize the Arctic Ocean. It has to do it via its relations with Canada and it is also seeking to do it via NATO, through the participation of Norway and Denmark in NATO. And now it is calling upon Sweden and Finland to essentially join NATO with a view to establishing a NATO agenda in the Arctic,” Michel Chossudovsky, from the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal.

Bringing the decades old conflict between western powers and Russian influence into the arctic could be explosive. With the pressures that Russia has exerted on Europe through oil supply threats during the ongoing Ukrainian situation, the question starts to become, how much control does Russia have over global oil supplies and what is the impact of the arctic reserves?

The Hope

Back in August, 30 Greenpeace protesters boarded the Russian Prirazlomnaya arctic oil platform to try and bring world attention to the looming threat of an arctic environmental disaster. The protesters whose origins spanned the globe and whose members included the famous Russian photographer Denis Sinyakov, were arrested by the Russian military on the charge of piracy and detained for months.

It took an international tribunal and 11 Nobel peace laureates writing to Putin, calling on him to drop the "excessive" charges of piracy, to have these protesters released on bail.

Greenpeace is changing the maritime political landscape with their activities and it is amazing to watch. The trouble is that since they are fighting against the interests of major nations and international corporations, they can only do so much.

A simple solution to the pending geo-political and environmental disaster is to stop our oil addiction. It will be a slow process but the more we divest from oil and revert that money towards alternative energies, the less this tense situation, and powder kegs like those in the middle eastern countries, become relevant.

We, as a species, need to come together and push for energy that won't destroy our future. I call on anyone who reads this to petition the Arctic Council and their own leadership for sanity. The best possible solution would be to declare the polar regions Marine Protected Areas with used designated solely for science.